| Summary: |
Journalism is undergoing a fundamental transformation, perhaps
the most fundamental since the rise of the penny press of the midnineteenth
century. In the twilight of the twentieth century and the dawn
of the twenty-first, there is emerging a new form of journalism whose distinguishing
qualities include ubiquitous news, global information access, instantaneous
reporting, interactivity, multimedia content, and extreme content
customization. In many ways this represents a potentially better form of
journalism because it can reengage an increasingly distrusting and alienated
audience. At the same time, it presents many threats to the most cherished
values and standards of journalism. Authenticity of content, source verification,
accuracy, and truth are all suspect in a medium where anyone with
a computer and a modem can become a global publisher.
Although the easy answer is to point to the Internet, the reasons for the
transformation of journalism are neither simple nor one-dimensional.
Rather, a set of economic, regulatory, and cultural forces, driven by technological
change, are converging to bring about a massive shift in the nature
of journalism at the millennium
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